


out of the woods

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Cabin Fic, Cabins, Canon Age Difference, Christmas 2020, Cuddling, Exes, F/M, Getting Back Together, Mention of Hallmark Movies, No Pregnancy, Short & Light, Smut, Snowed In, Unprotected Sex, conniving parents, this is not a slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:21:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: Ben Solo knows he is welcome to use the family cabin whenever he wants to. He does not know that his parents have also extended that same offer to his ex, Rey.Until he shows up in the mountains one Christmas Eve to find her already camped out, also taking them up on their invitation.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 30
Kudos: 489





	out of the woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reylooftroy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reylooftroy/gifts).



> Happy Holidays everyone!

  
  
  


_It takes a prayer he won’t admit to uttering to slide the borrowed Falcon home._

The last few miles of the drive out were as close a call as any, and if his dad hadn’t loaned him the ancient vehicle, Ben probably wouldn’t have made it out this far in the storm. His sleek black car at home wasn’t the same kind of blizzard-proof tank his father swore would outlive them all. 

When he turns off the ignition in the storm-slurry driveway, he knows that he’s not leaving anytime soon, until all this gets cleared away. 

He lets out a little breath and watches the snow pile up against the stationary windshield in front of him. It smothers all sound. He came here for this. Quiet. But now it’s eerie, like he’s truly alone. 

As alone as he feels on the inside, these days.

He unclips his seatbelt with a grunt. He’s not going to pity himself without breaking into the bar he knows is always stocked in the cabin. 

Han could be relied on for some things. The car will always run, the cabin will always be ready for a body to crash there, and there will be a decent drink any place Han expects himself to show up.

Ben doesn’t bother putting the car in the ancient garage: the cabin has always been full of secrets, of Han’s crap, so he knows he’ll open the door and see a bunch of impulse-buy farming equipment rusting inside, cluttering the place up, because Han was smart enough to hide it out here where Leia wouldn’t find it. 

He just knows. 

Ben curses as he opens the door to the car, riding in the Falcon—as his dad affectionately called it—always makes him feel greasy, but escaping that feeling for the snow soup on the drive is replacing one hell with another. 

_Merry Christmas._

* * *

_This has to be against some kind of break-up rule._

Rey bundles herself up in front of the window with a thick blanket and shivers: half from the cold and half from how _wrong_ she knows this probably is. Even if it isn’t technically Ben’s cabin. Even if Han and Leia are cool with it. It’s just nobody ever _offered_ —nobody ever told Rey she had a place that was hers too. When they insisted, when she didn’t have any holiday plans in her first year not coming home to the Solos with Ben, that she could use the cabin she suddenly _needed_ it.

It wasn’t like Ben was going to know. He’d be home with his family. And she’d be here. Alone. 

It burns deep down that she kind of deserves it. Their relationship ended when the summer did: too hot, too fast, too scary in how it fully enveloped her whole life in so short a time. It made sense that since then, the seasons rapidly changed, so she wouldn’t have to blame herself as much for how miserable things were but _winter,_ in some vague way, was actually at fault.

Alone, she could pretend to be stupid enough to believe that.

If she was going to feel sorry for herself, she could at least do it in blissful isolation, with a stunning view. And since she wasn’t a guest here this time, in one of the extra bedrooms with Ben, she could make use of the master bedroom, which had a blissfully large king bed shoved right up against a picture window looking out at the snow on the mountains. That wasn’t so bad at all, especially in this weather, with the bright gray afternoon night and the swirling snow in the air. 

She and Ben had taken a lot of walks on those peaks, his big gloves hand pushing her hips up against a tree, his darkly grinning mouth bowing to claim hers...

Rey shoves her cold feet underneath her and sips her hot chocolate, gritting her jaw.

_There would be none of that on this holiday._

* * *

Ben’s too busy kicking snow off his boots to notice that anything’s wrong at first. 

In fact, the image he opens the door to is a little too _right._

A fire is going in the old wood stove and the room smells sugary, familiar in a way he can’t place, and nothing about it is as stale or cold as he assumed it would be. Needing to freeze his ass off until he got the fire going, and combing through empty cabinets to find something to soak up all the booze he planned on drinking. There’s a cozy chair pulled up by the fire, a thick blanket, and the chair is filled by something so perfect he forgets reality for one second and feels like it’s _home._

Rey blinks at him in a moment of pure shock: snow in his hair, wildness in his eyes, and a bag in his hand.

_“Oi._ What are you doing here?”

The blanket falls from her shoulders as her knees go up to her chest like she needs to jump to a defensive posture instead of letting him see her relax.

“This is my family’s cabin. What are _you_ doing here?”

A frightened, insecure look lashes across her eyes, a look he hates. His two greatest wants clamped into a death grip with each other, wrestling in his gut: _Rey deserves to feel welcome anywhere. Rey shouldn’t feel welcome in any room with_ him _in it._

He drops his bag to the floor, which is slowly becoming covered with snow from the open door. He isn’t sure he should shut it yet. Enclosing them together.

He can’t help but hesitate at the door, looking her over in a cool slide that has her whole body on alert. 

Neither of them have offered much of an excuse to be here. Both unanswered questions linger in the air like the silence after a piercing siren. 

Rey breaks first only when his eyes widen when he notices her feet:

_“What?”_

He looks at her pathetically bare toes, half-shoved beneath her bottom in an attempt to keep them warm. 

“You forgot to pack _socks?”_

Rey’s jaw tightens as she looks out at the tableau of swirling white amidst the deep green trees. Her nostrils flare. 

So much in such a light tone of voice. 

Ben _knows her_ . Knows she’s bad at packing, enough to laugh, in spite of all this, that she’d forget something so basic as _socks,_ in winter, the pair she wore up here and clearly the only pair she currently has in her possession draped sopping-wet in front of the fire. 

She hears him unzip something. The sound has her so alert it scares her—half hopeful of a surprise, half in dread it’s something to kill her with—and Ben hovers a plain pair of black socks over her knee. 

“Here,” he says, not unkindly, not even as smugly as she kind of deserves, “keep them.”

Rey grits her teeth. 

“No thanks.”

He deposits them on her lap with a rude sort of flop when he flings them there lightly.

“Not up to you. I’m leaving them here. You can throw them out after I leave if they offend you so much. But I am not going to pretend I don’t care about you and I’m not going to stop anytime soon, Jesus, you’re like _ice—“_

His large hand closes around her exposed foot, hissing at the contact with her cold skin. 

Rey flails one knee, not trying to hit him, but certainly trying to get him to stop touching her. 

The way he cradles her foot would seem chivalric if it weren’t for how much it scares her. And it’s not like this is entirely a pale excuse to touch her again. It feels like a cadaver’s foot in his hand, which makes him hold tighter, not letting her escape the warmth of his own skin.

It’s Rey’s turn to hiss: pins and needles sparking up and down her leg as she twitches against his grasp. 

“They’ll warm up once the fire heats up the room,” she whispers, almost sleepily, her eyes fluttering even in a defiant glare.

“They’ll warm up with socks on,” he peels the folded pair apart and slips one quick over her foot, grabbing the other before she can think to kick it away. Like he’s dressing a fussy baby. It’s not fair, really, she’s seated down, and he’s hovering over her with no room to move. 

Rey glowers at him as the large socks droop around her ankles.

“Better?” he rasps defensively, not exactly sure why he expected gratitude from his interference.

_“No,”_ she spits back, drawing her knees in front of her chest and hugging them. 

There’s limitation to the movement: he’s still got his hands on her. She sucks in a breath and tries to duck her head to hide a flush on her cheeks. 

_“Yes,”_ she adds in a froth of frustration, her cheek resting against one knee and turning her face away from _him._

Ben sits back on his heels and looks up at her with a look of annoyance that is wise to all her habits, all her little tricks. Knowing and a little accepting. 

He looks away from her to the window to check the condition of the storm outside. Rey’s grinding her teeth in her chair. Driving him nuts. 

The calculations he’s making are based on slim odds: it’s not like he wants to linger with the one person on her earth who can’t stand him the most, but he also would like to not die on Christmas Eve.

“Ben,” Rey sighs, and there’s weight to it, like he’s not her least favorite person, but instead is once again the person who in her expectations is the highest to fall from, “You’re never getting out of here tonight.”

He grimaces because she’s right. 

“Your dad told me nobody would be here,” she says defensively, when he is silent, “I didn’t think I’d see you.”

Now that he knows that they’ve both been had by his meddling parents, he can’t exactly blame her. _Christmas conniving._

“I told them I was taking the cabin this week for some time alone back in October. I don’t doubt that they told you otherwise. I’m sure Leia has just seen too many Hallmark movies…”

Rey snorts. 

“Leia has not.”

Ben tightens his hands gently around her legs without realizing it, affronted, and then leans in further, lowering his voice in confidence.

“She _loves_ them.” He shakes his head, a wry smile twisting across his lips when he sees her tentative smile, “That crap would be playing from November to January as soon as she got home from work. Two strangers trapped in a cabin during a blizzard, learning the true meaning of Christmas.”

“A literal ray of sunshine and a stuck-up priss from the city,” Rey muses into her hot cocoa mug, chuckling. 

She winces after her statement hangs in the air for too long.

“Sorry.”

It stings more that she retracted that statement _because_ it could apply to him. He didn’t really want to do the whole bitter exes thing with Rey. He couldn’t really find it in himself to be mean to her. 

He just shakes his head. Rey sighs and sets her mug down on the floor. Not disrupting his hold on her legs that still hasn’t dropped. They both seem to prefer to ignore it. 

“I’m really sorry,” she says, in a tone of careful clarification, “For a ray of sunshine I’m not exactly perfect either. You know how I said that I was starting to see where I was too young for you?”

He keeps his face to the snowfall. Rey has turned herself towards him. Considering him closely. Softening her voice, like exactly the kind of patient, quiet conversation he hasn’t expected. Or ever witnessed from his parents. 

Ben bites his lip and raises his eyebrows, as if it’s the first time he’s been reminded of this and not thought about it constantly since she said it while breaking up with him.

“I screwed something good up. I just felt so _nervous_ around you all the time,” she intertwines her fingers and shrugs, “I kept thinking it would go away and I could feel like a functioning adult. Not leaving paperwork in the wrong places and losing my keys all the time. Head in the clouds.”

Ben’s eyes pull to her. This hasn’t been put to words, this image of distraction. When Rey told him she didn’t feel ready, he had cynically imagined how she really wanted to spend the remainder of her 20’s after she broke up with him: not monogamously. 

His hands tighten possessively around her legs at the thought.

“Are you nervous now?”

“Yes,” she looks at the floor.

Ben takes a deep breath and tries to comprehend this: his head was so full of whenever the fuck he could get out of here and then try to figure out how much he missed her after he made his escape. But now he just listens. 

“I made you nervous?”

Rey’s hand cups her stomach.

“I made myself nervous. I thought that would go away. When we were together. Or gradually I’d feel like I’d have myself back, but it’s like...I couldn’t take back what I gave to you. It scared me.”

He nods up at her. Can’t hate her. There’s no malice left in his body. Where was the explosive argument that was supposed to drive him out of here, into the storm, preferring freezing to death to her?

He would never choose that over being uncomfortable around her.

He might always choose her.

“I don’t know. You made me nervous too.”

Rey lets out a disbelieving sound. “You have the cool job, the nice place, your family. And I come in with everything to gain and everything to lose. I say all the wrong things and I screw up and…”

Ben closes his eyes to try to shut out the agony of hearing he hadn’t made her feel welcome

_“Why,”_ his eyes shut tighter, a thumb straying to brush her thigh, “are you telling me this now?”

Rey’s hand slides cautiously from her belly to her chest. Palm to her heart. They’re both bad talkers, but Rey is looking at him with so much feeling in her eyes that he’s feeling a little less stupid about everything because he almost knows what she’s feeling too.

“Because looking at you again makes me feel like—”

He waits. Eyes urging her in every unspoken way to finish that sentence. But she doesn’t. She looks at him a little hopelessly.

“Rey, I can’t leave until the snow clears, so this is going to get very awkward if you’re about to tell me you were right to break up with me.”

Her face turns red and she lets out a few tears. 

“I _really_ fucked up when I broke up with you,” she says instead, in a rush, like a deflating balloon. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He’s already rising up on his knees to kiss her before he even thinks to ask:

“How about I forgive you?”

Rey’s already kissing him, lips mashing into each other, suppressing sobs of relief, when she answers, _“yeah.”_

_Ugh. His parents win. For Rey, he'd let them._

Leia might have formulated this with a little more tension, a little more sniping, perhaps some mishaps in an old cabin before this happened. Because the damn woman probably knew this was going to happen.

But Ben and Rey come back together with all the friction of melted butter.

* * *

Ben scoops her up and they’re marching to that giant king bed _with purpose._ She is surprised, then, after so much lost time, that he lowers himself down on the bed with her in his arms. Cuddling her instead of crowding her onto her back and...ravishing her, or something.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?” 

The way his nose moves along her neck is so sweet. She shivers and pulls him closer. 

“This is unexpected.”

He grins and kisses her jaw.

“Don’t want to make you nervous.”

His large hand cups her ribs as he looms over her. He’s covered in flannel that’s so soft and warm: some instinctual part of her brain as her hands stroking over his chest to feel him like the down feathers of a baby chick. Ben nips kisses along her lips that pop like sparks. Too quick, gone in an instant, her brain sizzling with flashes of light. 

She slips her legs purposefully around his hips. 

“I’m sorry.”

Ben shakes his head.

"It's okay. We're just going to be more careful this time."

Rey nods as he grinds against her, grunting out his request with his eyes shut tightly. He laughs to himself, at them, as he hauls her sweater off of her and tosses it aside. He presses his face to her neck and keeps kissing there until she writhes under him. Overwhelmed. Needy. 

“Do you miss me?” he growls, brought so low by the universe that he will take pity if she’ll give it, “even a little?”

Rey gasps as he unbuttons her jeans and his hand dives for her. She grasps his shoulders and uses that leverage to hike her legs up over them. It doesn’t exactly aid him on his mission here, but it brings them closer, which he appreciates. Once her weight is settled between him and the bed, he resumes his search of her body, finding it deliciously wet.

He can’t help but press a victorious laugh into her hip.

“You miss me _this_ much?”

His fingers are bathed in how much she wants this. Wants him. 

Then he peels off her jeans and lays her back down. 

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

“Don’t be sorry,” he orders with his lips touching her belly, then her thigh, as he sinks down that cozy bed to make her warm, _“be good.”_

Rey falls back against the mattress at the first stroke of his tongue and obeys.

_“I’m sorry,”_ she repeats a third time, as her grasp on words is impaired. It’s a high peal of a gasp. With a whimper she bucks her hips into his mouth. He’s not deterred. Pins her down with his wide hands across her hips, shoving her into a soft, yielding mattress, driving her body to bounce against his mouth just a little. So she feels as out of control as he does. Maybe so she lets go. Her stomach coils with sparks and she tenses her thighs on his shoulders, trying to bring him as close as possible as his mouth worships her cunt. 

Everything feels okay. The mountain of snow closing in on the cabin and the blankets around her and Ben as this mass that will keep her warm. It feels good. It feels safe. Protected.

Slow, like things weren’t before. Patient. Gentle.

“B—Ben,” she stammers, writhing on the bed, “I need you, okay? Just you.”

He reluctantly pulls his mouth from her clit and crawls up her body. Garments get tangled as they both try to get him as naked as she is. It ends with his hair falling over his face, so much longer since she last saw it, and she reaches for him not to clutch him to her own body, but to comb it back with her fingers and look up at him.

The hairs that can’t be contained break up the image of him in front of her like static, like cracks, like black fractures. 

"I haven't been with anyone since you," she whispers, hoping he knows what that means.

Ben clears his throat.

"God, me neither."

That makes her chest ache. 

Her eyes soften and one of her hands drops from his hair to trace her fingers along his wet lips.

“You could have been meaner,” she says softly, “tortured me a little. I deserved it.”

Ben blinks at her. His hips buck forward to kiss the head of his cock against her hot folds. They both groan, grind on that contact a little, then return their focus to each other’s eyes.

"You want me to torture you a little?" he hisses, rubbing against her in a way that does not feel at all like torture, "interrogate you about what happened?"

Rey doesn't know whether to nod or shake her head. His cock catches against her swollen clit and keep her stammering, without words, blinking up at him helplessly.

“I don't think so. The past few months have been torture enough,” he says, the muscles of his back tense with restraint as he guides her body closer to his, “don’t you think?”

She nods and a little choking sound falls from her lips as he slides home.

“Let’s just feel _good,”_ he suggests, his hips rolling into hers, so close she loses her breath each time he thrusts in with a weak little puff from her lips.

She wraps her arms around him as tight as possible and closes her eyes. It’s as much as she can manage to voice her agreement. 

* * *

It’s some time on Christmas Eve night when Ben nudges her awake. He’s been on her since they fell into this bed, kissing her, cuddling her, having sex with her so gently she wanted to cry each time he let her cum. Instead of nervous she’s _eager_ now. Not dreading what comes next but begging for it. 

Rey doesn’t want to assign a meaning behind they’re suffering since she broke up with him. Pain is too cruel to claim it has a point. But she does dimly understand that she wouldn’t realize how much she wanted him right now if she hadn’t doubted it. Ben came back. Ben chose _her._

She groans, coiling up tight as a boa constrictor under the covers, savoring the warmth instead of responding to his attempt to wake her.

He’s already dressed and standing by the bed. He nudges her again.

For a brief moment she doesn’t move: realizing he’s got his coat and shoes on. Maybe if she doesn’t move, he won’t leave. If she pretends not to notice him, he won’t say goodbye.

Ben touches his fingers to her bare shoulder and nudges a third time.

“Hey. Get your coat.”

Rey lifts her head in alarm. _He’s not leaving. They’re leaving?_

He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat, widening his stance as if a little uncomfortable. 

“The snow has lightened up. I thought we could take a walk,” he clears his throat and looks away from her, even in the dark she knows he’s blushing, “talk about things.”

Rey wraps the blanket tight around her shoulders as she considers this, rolling onto her side to look at his face. It’s twitching with anxiety. She chews her lip. 

Ben fidgets and sort of bounces on his heels, like a child waiting to go downstairs after Santa came. She hides a smile as she sits up, reaching for a sweater that was dropped on the floor. 

“Things?”

He grumbles in his throat for a minute. He’s tentatively nudged the subject but she wants to catch him with his hand on it. He watches her with dark eyes as she wiggles back into her jeans and slides his black socks onto her feet.

Rey doesn’t hide a slightly victorious grin. Her smile is relieved, and perhaps so pleased that she deserves it when he bows to meet her eyes with a fury in them that steals her breath.

“Like how I’m still in love with you,” he tells her, like he’s warning her of a cold front and to wear something to protect her ears.

He doesn’t kiss her as he leaves her to finish dressing, perhaps needing to gather the conviction to walk out the door. Maybe saving it. For when they reach the top of the mountain.

A warning is nice. So she knows it’s coming. And before it does, Rey has the time to decide that she’ll like it.

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for Daae, thank you so much!!


End file.
